ON THE GARDENS OF MEXICO. 153 



was celebrated by a festival, and the guests greeted each other as on 

 the appearance of an old familiar friend who called up the remem- 

 brance of tbe past, and the tender associations of their native land. 



" The Banana, so generally heard of, is a celebrated plant in 

 Mexico. Another is the Cacao, the fruit of which furnished the 

 chocolate, — from the Mexican chocolate — now so common a beverage 

 throughout Europe. The Vanilla, confined to a small district of the. 

 sea-coast, was used for the same purposes, of flavouring food and 

 drink, as with us. The great staple of the country, as, indeed, of 

 the American continent, was Maize, or Indian corn, which grew 

 freely along the valleys, and up the steep sides of the Cordilleras, to 

 the high level of the table-land. The Aztecs were as curious in their 

 preparation, and as well instructed in its manifold uses, as the most 

 expert New-England housewife. Its gigantic stalks in these equi- 

 noxial regions afford a saccharine matter not found to the same 

 extent in northern latitudes, and supplied the natives with sugar 

 little inferior to that of the cane itself, which was not introduced 

 among them till after the conquest. Hernandez, who celebrates the 

 manifold ways in .which the Maize was prepared, derives the name 

 from the Haytian word Mahiz. But the miracle of nature was the 

 great Mexican Aloe, or Magney, whose clustering pyramids of 

 flowers, towering above their dark coronals of leaves, were sprinkled 

 over many a broad acre of the table-land. Its bruised leaves afford a 

 paste, from which paper was manufactured ; its juice was fermented 

 into an intoxicating beverage, pulqrue, of which the natives to this 

 day are excessively fond ; its leaves further supply an impenetrable 

 thatch for the more humbler dwellings ; thread, of which coarse stuffs 

 were made, and strong cords, were drawn from its tough and twisted 

 fibres j pins and needles were made of the thorns at the extremity of 

 its leaves ; and the root, when properly cooked, was converted into a 

 palatable and nutritious food. The Agave, in short, was meat, 

 drink, clothing, and writing materials, for the Aztec ! Surely never 

 did nature enclose in so compact a form many of the elements of 

 human comfort and civilization. It would be obviously out of place 

 to enumerate in these pages all the varieties of plants, many of them 

 of medicinal virtue, which have been brought from Mexico into Europe. 

 Still less can I attempt a catalogue of its flowers, which, with their 

 variegated and gaudy colours, form the greatest attraction of our 



